US resumes Ukraine intelligence sharing after brief suspension, Zelenskyy confirms

Volodymyr Zelenskyy emerged from talks in Oslo on Tuesday with news that felt like relief: the United States had switched the intelligence back on. For the previous week, Ukraine had been flying blind to Russian missile attacks—no advance warnings, no time to move people to shelter, no chance to prepare. Now, sitting across from US envoy Steve Witkoff in Norway, Zelenskyy confirmed that the flow of real-time intelligence about ballistic missile strikes had resumed. "Now it works. It's great," he said, understanding that the restoration of this single capability could mean the difference between life and death for civilians caught in the path of incoming fire.

The suspension itself had been a shock. Last week, without public explanation, the White House had cut off the advance warnings Ukraine relied on to protect its population. At the same time, the Trump administration had imposed restrictions on Starshield, the military-grade satellite internet service that Ukraine uses to coordinate drone strikes against Russian positions. These moves arrived amid a broader deterioration in US-Ukraine relations—one that had been building for ten days, since Trump announced he was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel fuel and proposed an energy ceasefire that Russia promptly ignored. The message from Washington seemed unmistakable: pressure was mounting on Kyiv to accept terms.

Zelenskyy had come to Oslo with a specific offer. He told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Ukraine would halt its long-range attacks on Russian oil refineries—a key demand from Trump—if the US would provide Patriot missile interceptors to defend against air strikes. The Pentagon, however, had blocked the delivery of Patriots that other countries had paid for, leaving Ukraine more exposed than ever to Russian aerial bombardment. The Ukrainian president also raised the restrictions on Starshield, which had crippled his military's ability to launch mid-range drone operations. These were not abstract grievances. They were concrete constraints on Ukraine's capacity to fight and survive.

The talks in Oslo involved more than just Zelenskyy and Witkoff. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, joined by video. Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish president Alexander Stubb participated. EU and British security officials were present. Yet the architecture of the moment revealed something troubling about where power was flowing. Witkoff was scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin the very next day—his numerous trips to Moscow contrasting sharply with his single previous visit to Kyiv. US officials described the upcoming Putin meeting as an effort to "create a pathway toward direct trilateral and broader multilateral negotiations." Trilateral meant three parties: Trump, Putin, and China's Xi Jinping. It did not include Ukraine.

Zelenskyy's response was direct. "There can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine," he said in Oslo. He opposed any summit that would exclude him, insisting that if negotiations concerned Ukraine's future, Ukraine had to be at the table. The statement was not merely diplomatic posturing. It reflected a fundamental principle: that Ukraine's sovereignty could not be bargained away in rooms where Ukrainians were absent. Yet the very fact that such a summit was being floated suggested that the Trump administration was prepared to entertain exactly that scenario.

Back in Washington, Trump himself was applying pressure in public. He accused Zelenskyy of being the main obstacle to a deal, suggesting the Ukrainian president could have negotiated an agreement two years earlier during a conversation in the Oval Office. Trump also revealed that he had asked Putin to release Stephen Hubbard, an American prisoner held by Russian forces in occupied Ukraine—a gesture that signaled growing alignment with Moscow. The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, was blunt about what she saw happening. "Although American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for one and a half years now," she said, Ukraine had not capitulated "because Europe has been supporting Ukraine." She questioned whether US negotiators had been honest brokers at all.

US officials denied that any deliberate political decision had been made to harm Ukraine. Rubio insisted that Patriot interceptors were simply in short supply and needed elsewhere. Yet the timing and scope of the restrictions—the intelligence cutoff, the Starshield slowdown, the blocked Patriot deliveries—suggested a coordinated message. Zelenskyy, when asked if Ukraine was losing the war, replied with precision: "Of course we are not losing. But we are losing people because of Russian attacks and time. It's a pity." On Tuesday alone, at least nine people were killed in Ukraine. Three civilians died when a Russian drone struck two vehicles on the Kyiv-Odesa highway. A shuttle bus driver, heading toward a military cemetery, was among the dead.

The restoration of intelligence sharing was a step backward from the brink, but it did not resolve the underlying crisis. Witkoff's next destination was Moscow, where he would meet Putin. The question of whether Ukraine would be included in any subsequent negotiations remained open—and Zelenskyy's opposition to being excluded suggested that the coming weeks would bring further friction between Washington and Kyiv, even as the immediate threat of Russian missiles returned to the realm of the knowable.